Pine Garland

My life as usual has been extremely busy lately. I had decided that I need some side project arts and crafts time, and had found an idea of making garland with those cinnamon scented pine cones. I switched some things up with my garland and think it turned out pretty nice. He's the skinny on how to do it.

I went to Lowes and bought some scented pine cones, screw eyelet hook things, and a can of brown spray paint. At this point in the project I wasn't sure what I was going to attach my pine cones to to make the garland. The tutorial I had originally seen hooked the pine cones onto a ribbon, by punching holes in the ribbon.

Being my mother's daughter I knew I had a huge collection of ribbon at home and if I decided to go that route I was set.


Next step in the project I took all of the screw eyelet things out of their bags and spray painted them brown. Just a tip to keep in mind spray paint and cold weather do not work together. I cleared some space in my garage and spray painted in there with the help of a little space heater blowing on my workspace.



Once your screws are dry you need to screw them into the tops of your pine cones. By this point in the project it was several days later and I had found a premade jingle bell garland I decided to embellish with my pine cones. To make sure that my pine cones were going to stay on the garland I left a small opening big enough to slide the garland's wire into and then closed the gap with another twist of the screw into the pine cone.


I think the garland turned out pretty nice. And there is a faint smell of cinnamon in the air.

Pioneer Day

This weekend Jon and I went to dinner with his brother Jason and his girlfriend. After dinner we walked to the car and could hear the fireworks in the distance. We spotted a parking garage and decided to see if we could see the fireworks from there.

We were in luck. We watched the show and it was awesome. No crowds and no traffic to fight with afterwards. Plus there was the fabulous atmosphere of downtown.

Valentine Surprise

Jon surprised me this year by kidnapping my Vespa from my parent's house and taking it down to Beehive scooters to get it restored. If you are reading this and are shocked to learn that I have a Vespa, I not really surprised. I purchased this lovely back in high school. I was beyond excited to get it. However, I really didn't have the knowledge or means to get it restored to the condition that I wanted.

Over the past years there have been a few moments of inspiration to get the scooter up and running, but then those are quickly killed by frustration of Italian engineering. I guess in an attempt of out of side out of mind, the scooter had been left at my parent's house. My mom had been using it as a place to put her bucket of gardening tools.

Since Jon has been making plans to build his Triumph motorcycle I have been wanting to get my Vespa up and running. Once again that feeling of intimidation had filled my head. Especially when I think of the shoe box full of parts we had previously taken off the bike, that I was sure we didn't know where or how to put back on.

Jon and I would talk about getting the scooter up and running and joke about me putting around on it, but that was as far as it got. We weren't sure were to take it, or even how to get it there since we don't have a truck.

Over the weekend I was helping Jon at the shop and he surprised me by telling me the story of my Valentine Day Surprise, which can be found in his words here. I was beyond shocked and overjoyed. We discussed color schemes, design ideas and what additional parts we may need. When we got home we started putting the list together.

When all of this is done I will have the most fabulous vintage Vespa ever!

Stay tuned for updates, we are hoping to have this project done in a few months.

Valentine Craftiness

I may not be posting on my own blog, but I am still reading blogs pretty much every day. I came across this Valentine Day craft project and thought it was cute.

It was originally posted here on Design Sponge.

Tis the season for.. toffee

As usual every Christmas time I make toffee. It's a family recipe and everyone seems to love it. The only downside to this, is that each year my list of people that would like toffee seems to get longer and longer. This year I planned out making 6 batches. Hopefully that will be enough. If not, guess I go back to the store and pick up some more stuff to make a couple more batches.

I have a running list in my head of people who have mentioned they wanted toffee, but since my memory isn't the greatest some days. Leave me a comment if you want to be added to the list.

Here are some shots of my process. I got 3 batches done last night, then I was out of cookie sheets.

(get all of your ingredients together)

(start cooking in the electric frying pan)

(Melt the chocolate chips)

(once it turns the perfect shade of brown and smells wonderful pour into a cookie sheet)

(let set for a minute or two and then cover with melted chocolate)

Hallo-weenie

Usually every year we are very into the Halloween spirit. We decorate the house. Pull out Stew and get him ready for the holiday. But this year none of that happened. I am pretty sure it had to do with the fact that I have been battling a cold for a few weeks and have had to fly out of town a couple of times. I just didn't put the dedication into Halloween this year.

We received several party invitations, but ultimately decided not to attend them since we had no costumes. At the last minute we decided to get out and go to a "zombie" party. Although we had no costumes we threw some makeup on and headed out. We needed to stop by Target for some chips 'n dip. While there we got several comments about being scary or getting hid by that bus from no where. Considering we had not thought this out before hand. I don't think it turned out too bad.

May Day

Happy May Day! Time for good weather and to party!

(image from here)

Silk-Tie Easter Eggs

Every year my family gets together for Easter and has what we call an Egg Fight. It sounds messy but really isn't. Basically everyone picks an egg (hardboiled) then the first two people team up. They hits the ends of their eggs together until one end on one of the eggs breaks. The person with the broken end turns their egg around and uses the good end. This continues until there is a winner (an egg with at least one end not broken). The winner then continues on to fight another person their egg. We keep track of how many wins an egg gets and then chear for the winner.

As I am writing this out it doesn't sound so exciting, but it is pretty entertaining when you are involved in the actual game.

Rather than having plan 'ol dyed eggs this year this looks fabulous.


Leave it to Martha to share with us how to use old ties to create unique Easter eggs. Go on a hunt for those old silk ties the men in our lives have been holding onto for way too long, put them to good use and create some beautiful eggs!

Valentine's Day

UPDATE: All arrangements available through the open house have been sold out!

Girls - I am sure you are all aware that Saturday is Valentines Day. However, your hunnies may not have even had the thought cross their minds. Well, I have the solution for everyone. Emberlily Design is having a Valentines Day Open House. If you don't already know what Emberlily Design is, let me fill you in. Emberlily Design is the most wonderful, local flower design business and it's owned and operated by my dearest friend Hollee.

Check out her website to see her Valentine Day specials (available for delivery or pickup) or drop by the Open House to pick up an arrangement for your sweetie. The Open House will also have other gifts, in addition to flowers, available for purchase.

Time and Place
Start Time: Friday, February 13, 2009 at 2:00pm
End Time: Saturday, February 14, 2009 at 5:00pm

Location:
Emberlily Design Studio
124 E 7660 S
Midvale, UT

801-633-2495

Valentine Goodies

With Valentines day two weeks away here are a few goodies I found listed on Etsy.

Square Heart cutout necklace by isilveryou.etsy.com
Amore Heart by raedunn.etsy.com
Valentine Word Puzzle Pillow by sweetdovedesigns.etsy.com
Valentine's Day Forever Tattoo by Below14th.etsy.com
Black Terryville Key by andyshouse.etsy.com
Let Me Count the Ways by raedunn.etsy.com

Check out these stores. Drop a hint to your sweetheart of what you would like from them, or just splurge and buy it yourself!

Snow Snow Snow

I thought it appropriate to post my pictures of the Christmas snow storm, right as we are gearing up for another snow storm tonight. As I mentioned in my Christmas post we woke up Christmas morning to find that the power went out in the middle of the night. There was a substation to the west of us that was having problems. I am not sure if it was because of the snow or not. However, they also closed 7800s to the west of us due to the drifting snowing and so many cars sliding off the road. Christmas morning before we left the house on our journey to visit with family I took this picture.

It's hard to see in the picture unless you zoom in, but the snow is coming down sideways. This was because it was so windy. To go clean off the car so we could leave Jon got all bundled up.

When we were coming home on Christmas night we encountered another storm. The next morning/afternoon this is what it looked like.

We didn't drive my car over the holidays and so she got covered in snow and had to be
dug out.

Hopefully the storm coming tonight won't be as bad, but as I am typing this the news just reporting sideways snow falling in Cache Valley.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everyone! I am not much for making New Years Resolutions, but after some persuading by Jon I made two and am hoping to achieve them this year.


**As requested my two goals are to find out what this mystery illness is that is ailing me. (not that I haven't already been trying but to actually get it resolved this year). The second is the get Needle and Pin Productions completely off the ground and running. I have been dabbling with it in the past and I just need to get my butt in action and get serious about it.

Christmas

We had an eventful holiday with all of starting on Christmas Eve. We visited with my Grandparents and then headed over to Jon's Grandpa's to celebrate with his family.

Christmas morning we were hoping to get an early start on the celebration but woke up to find that our power went out in the middle of the night and that it had been snowing like crazy. (I'll post my snow fall pictures in another post) We opened our presents and here is a collage of the excitement.

Once we were done at home we got ready and headed over to my parents for breakfast of Züpfe bread and to open presents.

We ended the day at Jon's Mom's house where we enjoyed their Christmas tradition of Christmas pie and opening presents.

It was a wonderful day and it was great to be able to spend time with each of our families.

Gift Tags

This year for Christmas I decided that I would make my own gift tags. Every year I feel like I go to the store and I can never find gift tags in a design that I really like. One year I even forfeited gift tags and just wrote people's names on the bottom of their gifts.

To start this project I found a paper punch in the shape of a tag and various printed papers as well as cardstock in solid colors.


Once I had a bunch of little tags punched out I decided which solids to match up with prints. I then glued a solid and print together. By doing this it provided the tag with a little weight, since the printed paper was kind of light. I then used a hole punch to punch holes at the top of the tags. I had decided that I wanted to use various ribbons and ric rac to hang the tags from. You could skip the holes at the top and just tape the tags on if you want.


Once all of this is done you can design and address the tags however you want.

Here is an example of a wrapped present with a completed tag. I used stamps for the lettering.

Santa

Even Larry is waiting for Santa to come.

Homemade Toffee

Every year I make several batches of homemade toffee to take into work, family events and holiday celebrations. However, after all of that is said and done there is always someone who says they wished they could have had a little extra to take home.

So, I am trying to take an inventory of anyone who might like their own personal batch of toffee this year. If you have never had my toffee, I think it's fabulous - but I might be biased. Also, I don't put nuts in or on the outside of the toffee.

If you want toffee just leave me a comment and I will make sure you are on my list.

Festive

I am sure I will get some criticism for this post, but here it goes. Although I am enjoying this snowless weather. I am having a hard time feeling like it's actually Christmas. My internal calendar is all confused because there is no snow on the ground. There have even been several times I have left the house recently without wearing a heavy coat. Shh...don't tell my mom. ;)

I am sure once it snows I will regret that I even missed it in the first place and then I will want to go on vacation to somewhere warm. Those who know me well know that I have a fear of driving in the snow. It's not necessarily the snow that I am afraid of, but rather the other drivers that might run into me.

I guess it's just the magic of snow that I miss, not the actual snow and the trouble that goes along with it. Maybe I should go find myself a snowglobe to shake and get that magical feeling.

Tis the season.. to give and say thanks

It's that time of year to be thankful and give to those we love. With my love of stationary I am always looking at what is out there. The art of note writing seems to be dying off. I am not the best at doing it, but I do like to try and having cute cards does help. Here are few notecard sets I have found recently - that I love.







I found all these at RedStamp.com.

To be Thankful

The Library of Congress has recently added several color pictures from the 1940's to their Flickr Stream. After looking through several of the pictures it made me very grateful for the sacrifices that so many people have made for this country. Veteran's day doesn't always have the celebration and fanfair that other holidays receive, but it doesn't make it any less of a holiday and I feel it should always be poignantly remembered by our country.

My Grandpa and Grandma on my mother's side as well as my Grandpa on my father's side all served in the arm forces. I am thankful for all they did in supporting this country. Here is a picture of my mom's parents.


If you have the time I highly recommend going through the pictures from the Library of Congress. They can be found here.

Halloween is just around the corner..

I have posted a few Halloween decorations for sale on my Etsy.com account, NeedlePinProductions.etsy.com.

Go check them out! You don't have to buy from Etsy, you can order directly through me. Just email me what you would like.